Why Your Instagram Pics Look Weird on Twitter Now

Notice anything strange when you're looking at a photo of meatballs through the Valencia filter on Twitter? Probably. Instagram has revoked Twitter's ability to show its pictures on its website, leaving pics weirdly cropped and off-centre.

Per Twitter, technically what happened here is Instagram disabled Twitter cards, which are the things you need to attach media to your 140-character messages. So now the images appear cropped — what Twitter calls a "pre-cards experience." Here's Twitter's full statement on the issue:

Users are experiencing issues with viewing Instagram photos on Twitter. Issues include cropped images. This is due to Instagram disabling its Twitter cards integration, and as a result, photos are being displayed using a pre-cards experience. So, when users click on Tweets with an Instagram link, photos appear cropped.

Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom apologised to users for the problem at the LeWeb conference. He said it wasn't a result of the Facebook acquisition and that Instagram "will always be integrated with Twitter in a way that you can tweet out from Instagram to Twitter."

We are currently working on building the best experience for Instagram users. A handful of months ago, we supported Twitter cards because we had a minimal web presence. We've since launched several improvements to our website that allow users to directly engage with Instagram content through likes, comments, hashtags and now we believe the best experience is for us to link back to where the content lives. We will continue to evaluate how to improve the experience with Twitter and Instagram photos. As has been the case, Instagram users will continue to be able to share to Twitter as they originally did before the Twitter Cards implementation.

But anyway, you know how it is. Instagram and Twitter. They used to be hot and heavy. Then Instagram cheated on Twitter was bought by Facebook and the whole relationship went down the drain. Messy breakups are never fun for anyone. Or, until this truly gets resolved, for your Twitter feed. [New York Times]